


La SNCF vous souhaite un joyeux Noël

by TerresDeBrume



Series: AUs without a cause [63]
Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02, Digimon Adventure tri.
Genre: English, France (Country), French Characters, Gen, Post-Series, Trains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 02:46:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13137480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. Due to a technical incident in Juvisy, the train is now stopped on the track. Please remain seated, and do not attempt to come out of the vehicle. We will keep you informed as the situation develops. Thank you for your understanding.”OR:It's the 24th of December and literally nobody wants to be there.





	La SNCF vous souhaite un joyeux Noël

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SecretSantamon over on Tumblr...hope the giftee ikes it! :D
> 
> Floramon calls the Chosen Children ‘Digisaviors’ because the French dub of Adventure called them ‘Digisauveurs’ (sauveurs = saviors) and I always thought it’d be a nice bit of worldbuilding to keep the different names for different countries.
> 
> The title means “The [National Society of (French) Railway] wishes you a Merry Christmas” in case you were wondering.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please,” the conductor starts, voice crackling weakly through the overhead speakers, “due to a technical incident in Juvisy, our train is currently stopped on the tracks for an unknown duration. Please remain seated and do not attempt to exit the vehicle. I will keep you informed as the situation develops. Thank you for your understanding.”

 

The train car erupts into a collective groan before the speakers are even finished crackling to a stop, and Floramon has to make a conscious effort to hold his sigh in. To his left, even Cathy looks harried beyond reason, head thumping against the Plexiglas behind her in a way that messes with the perfection of her French bun. Floramon takes a deep, steadying breath, and pats her hand with his left petals.

 

“At least we’re sitting,” he points out in a low voice.

 

It’s the twenty-fourth of December on rush hour and, like every other train in a hundred kilometers radius around Paris, the RER D is absolutely packed. Every seat is taken, people are standing in the aisles between booths, and the humid heat of too many bodies in a closed space wrestles with the cold air coming from outside for control while the heaters under seats burn at passengers’ legs. It is the third time in as many days the train had to stop for repairs. Overall, one drawn-out groan isn’t that bad a reaction. Even if it does come from a hundred people at once.

 

“All I want is to get home and eat the freaking chicken I’ve been waiting for all week,” Cathy sighs after a long string of much more colorful swearing, “it really isn’t that much to ask!”

 

Floramon nods, even though Cathy can’t possibly see it with her eyes closed. Truth be told, he’d rather not have to sit in the train for much longer. It makes his winter coat uncomfortably hot, and the smell of sweat is so strong it could almost be a sauna. There’s no point in wallowing in the frustration, though, so Floramon does his best to deserve his crest and puts on a brave face.

 

“It’s only half past six,” he says, trying to walk the balance between ‘I’m trying to be reasonable’ and the accidental condescension that never gets anything but prickly animosity from Cathy, “we still have plenty of time to make it to dinner.”

“Yeah, speak for yourself,” an irritated, low voice grumbles on Floramon’s right, “I have to get the bûche before I get home!”

 

Floramon turns his head to discover a balding white man in impeccably pressed pants and a red face, who looks like he’s seconds away from crossing his arms on his chest and sinking into a sulk. Floramon stares at the man over the head of an adorable black girl with a red coat and perfectly symmetrical clouds of hair on either side of her head. She looks at her partner, a Moonmon, in obvious confusion before crossing Floramon’s gaze, and Floramon shrugs. Sometimes, people are unfathomable. Overhead, he sees the little girl’s mother exchange an exaggerate eye roll with Cathy, and he has to put his petals over his mouth to disguise his chuckle into a yawn.

Then Cathy sighs again and asks:

 

“Can I borrow your phone? Mine’s dead and I need to text mom to let her know.”

“You let him have a phone?” The red-faced man asks with a large helping of sarcasm on the side, “what, your kid’s got one too?”

“I don’t have kids,” Cathy shoots back without looking up from her texting, “he’s _my_ partner.”

 

Around them, Floramon notices several people pausing in their conversation at the words, one of them going as far as turning around to stare. He resists the urge to look down and sink in his seat so he can smile and wave at them instead. Cathy just ignores the wondering stares and, eventually, they turns away.

Things are different for Cathy and Floramon from what they are for people like, say, Coumba, or Taichi from Japan, or even for Bintou, the Kindness kid from Burkina Faso. Where these three Digisaviors and their partners have undertaken works that keep them in front of cameras on the regular, Cathy’s career as a professional negotiator for the French police keeps her and Floramon away from the spotlight, for the most part. Floramon can’t say he minds. Moments like this, when people realize Cathy is way too old to have her own partner without being one of the Digisaviors are more than embarrassing enough, thank you very much.

 

“Yeah, right,” Red Face huffs after a too long beat, “as if.”

 

Floramon knows he’s more high strung than his partner, by a long shot, but he’s been through the same training she has, and it’s easy for him to ignore the annoying-but-not-dangerous man in favor of making faces at the little girl and her Moonmon. That should help pass the time until they can finally get back on track.

 

 

Fast forward about an hour, and both Maelys and her Moonmon have lost all interest for faces. They’ve also lost interest for Floramon’s styles, his petals, the sepals over his head, and his entire repertoire of funny stories and other anecdotes about his and Cathy’s friends. In fact Maelys who, as her mother mentioned, is only just about to turn five, has lost interest in anything that isn’t getting out of the train. To be fair, so have most of the adults, and Floramon isn’t exactly far behind them. The entire wagon tenses with hopeful anticipation when the speakers crackle back to life, but then the driver says:

 

“Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please. I’ve just been informed the repairs in Juvisy will be taking longer than anticipated and they should take at least two more hours.”

 

This time, the wagon bursts into annoyed conversations without waiting for the announcement to finish. Floramon thinks he hears apologies, somewhere in the noise, but between people complaining about the SNCF services, the people complaining about complainers, and the ones who are mostly just trying to warn family or arrange new transportation to make up for missed buses, they’re obviously a lost cause. In her mother’s arms, little Maelys started crying as soon as she understood her plight wasn’t over yet, and the red-faced man from earlier is starting to make irritated noises that don’t bode well for anyone in the vicinity.

 

“Why isn’t Huang here when I need him,” Cathy mutters on the side, and Floramon almost chuckles.

 

Instead, he confirms his intuition with a look. She looks grimly determined, like she’s about to enter a war zone rather than interact with a toddler, and that may or may not make Floramon’s smile wider.

 

“Excuse me,” he tells Maelys’ mom, “do you want my seat? I’ll just get on Cathy’s knees.”

 

Maelys’ mother accepts with a relieved sigh, seating herself and her two charges in Floramon’s vacated spot as soon as he’s settles in Cathy’s lap.

 

“Thanks,” she says once she’s set her grocery bag between her feet. “I’m Lucille, by the way.”

“I’m Floramon,” Floramon says, just in case Lucille and Maelys couldn’t tell, “and this is my partner, Cathy.”

“Nice to meet you.”

 

Cathy’s voice is polite, but it’s easy to feel how tense she is, angling away from Maelys as far as she can manage without bumping into the bags stand on her left. She’s not scared, exactly, but she’s never been comfortable with children, and it shows, so Floramon decides to take on the conversation from there.

 

“Are you joining your family for Christmas?”

“My brother in law,” Lucille replies while trying to soothe Maelys’ tired sobs. “It’s the last night for his first Hanukkah, so he wanted his sister and I to be there. We’re not particularly religious so we said yes. We can always do Christmas tomorrow.”

“I want Christmas now,” Maelys says in a plaintive voice, her head half buried between her mother’s chest and Moonmon’s head. I’m hungry. I want to go home.”

 

Floramon dismisses Lucille’s apologetic face with a shake of his head, well aware that young children and digimons don’t deal with frustrated and pointless waiting as well as most adults do. Still, when Maelys shows no sighs of calming down for several minutes, Cathy squirms under him before she asks:

 

“Maelys, do you like foie gras?”

 

Maelys hides her face behind Moonmon’s curvy body, and it’s her who answers:

 

“Yes! It’s like pâté but better!”

“Good,” Cathy replies with only a little bit of stiffness in her smile, “because we have some.”

 

It takes some twisting, and Floramon landing halfway into Lucille’s lap, but Cathy manages to reach inside her handbag retrieve the high-quality foie gras she bought for Christmas dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Deneuve might be disappointed at its absence later on but, given that they’ll get to have most of the oysters and canapés to themselves, Floramon is sure they’ll understand. Besides, if they’re going to be stuck in this train until nine at the earliest, they might as well make the best of it.

 

“Here,” Cathy says once she’s managed to pile some foie gras on a toast with her pocket knife, “enjoy.”

 

Floramon watches Maely bite into the toast with delight, and shifts to let Cathy give Moonmon’s his own piece of bread.

 

“Anyone else wants some?” She asks the rest of their booth once she’s done. “If we’re going to break out the food, we might as well share.”

“I’ll pass on that,” says the old man in front of Lucille, “it’s no kosher. But I have sufganiyot, if anyone wants it.”

“What’s a sof-gayn-yacht?”

“It’s a sort of doughnut we eat for Hanukkah,” the old man says while someone in the next booth over opens a bottle of champagne. “Do you want to hear the story of Hanukkah?”

 

Floramon grins when Maelys nods with enthusiasm and, within minutes, he’s completely engrossed with the story of a celebration neither he nor Cathy know anything about. Around them, other people have begun to take food and drinks out of their bags; foie gras, chocolates and various types of smoked sausages making the rounds. Floramon manages to get his petals on candied oranges, laughing when Cathy pretends to try and steal them. They enjoy the bickering for a while, people warming up to one another as they discuss the various foods they’re bringing to the table, or their projects for the night. Floramon leaned back against Cathy’s chest, relaxing in the easygoing atmosphere, when she straightens up with a mighty gasp that makes half their booth jump:

 

“I know what we should do!” She announces, pitching her voice loud enough for half the wagon to hear, “we should sing Christmas songs! Does anyone have internet on their phone so so we can get the music?”

“Ah, no!” The red-faced man protests from his seat.

 

Floramon doesn’t miss the way the wagon tenses back again at the words and neither, he’s sure, does Cathy. Still, people remain blessedly quiet while the man grumbles about having to deal with stupid and artificial dance music on Christmas Eve, of all days. Maybe, if they’re lucky, he’ll just exhaust himself up and they can salvage the good mood. Maybe.

Instead of that, though, the man reaches down behind his feet and, to everyone’s surprise, fiddles with a hard case until he’s fitted a gleaming oboe together.

 

“If we’re doing Christmas music,” he announces with a tone that will accept no argument, “we’re doing it right.”

 

He brings the oboe to his lips with an intense look of concentration, and the first notes of _Petit papa Noël_ float into the bemused silence of the wagon. He goes as far as the first chorus before he stops and asks in a slightly irritated tone:

 

“Didn’t someone say something about singing?”

 

There’s a slight pause, and then Cathy shakes herself and says:

 

“Right. Everybody, on three! One, two, three!”

 

The entire wagon launches into the chorus, even Moonmon, who is half asleep and missing half the words. Floramon, who has yet to properly learn the words after seven years in the human world, does his best to follow, but eventually gives up when the elderly man manages to trade sheets of paper and a couple of restaurant-issued crayons for his last sufganiyah. He spends the last of the wait and the subsequent ten-minutes Journey to Juvisy drawing with Maelys, and he may or may not tear up when she gives him a drawing of the whole adventure.

 

“Merry Hanukkah!” Maelys pipes up when Floramon and Cathy get up to leave.

“Thanks,” Cathy replies, “you too! And happy holidays to everyone.”

 

Having the whole wagon reply isn’t really a surprise, not after she played conductor to their improvised choir for the better part of an hour, but it still makes Floramon grin until they step into Mr. Deneuve’s car.

 

“Are you alright?” He asks as soon as he and Cathy are done exchanging greetings. “It wasn’t too long?”

“Nah,” Cathy promises. “It was actually really cool.”

 

Honestly, Floramon agrees.


End file.
